hudson_m

I have recently bought one of these Archer basses as a return to playing after 20 years of not really doing much and after a bit of setting up - bridge height and some working of fingerboard - it now has a decent action. My previous bass was a quite nice French Jacquet School, but I'm not sure yet about this very nice looking (in terms of the wood) bass. It's fine for pizz work with the supplied strings - they are actually quite nice and smooth sounding, but for arco work its terrible! My guess is that this is most likely the fault of the default strings and that I need to invest in some better ones. After a lot of reading, I am tempted by the D'Addario Hybrids but does anybody really know that this will make the difference I'm after. Some more info perhaps: Slow slurred arco is fine - warm even sound across all four strings. Slow detached arco - also OK but bow attack needs some effort to ensure consistency (& strong left hand) Fast detached - terrible scratchy noise - strings hardly speak at all! - and this is what I want the bass to be able to do! As said, I assume I need better strings, but before I fork out the £100+ needed ... can anyone think of anything else I should try setup-wise first? Mark